Malin Dumps 25,000 MGS Images on the Web
-- The "Year of Disclosure" Continues to Unfold

In a not so shocking turn of events, Malin
Space Science Systems (MSSS) has released a web based gallery of some
25,000 Mars Global Surveyor images of the Red Planet. This sudden development
is summarized in the official press release from MSSS:

More than 20,000 new images of the planet Mars taken by NASA's
Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available in a web-based photo
album -- the single largest one-time release of images for any planet
in the history of solar system exploration.

The 'picture postcard' scenes in the new images reveal
the Red Planet, often said to be the most Earth-like planet, as an
alien, bizarre and puzzling world.

"These are exciting times for Mars scientists and
this release of images is in my opinion something unprecedented in
the Mars science business," said Dr. Ken Edgett, staff scientist
at Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, CA. "People everywhere
with Internet access will be able to take their own personal journey
of exploration and discover Mars via these pictures. They can experience
them the same way that Mars Global Surveyor scientists do -- one at
a time, no captions or explanations, just 'Here it is. What does it
show me?'"

The archive of images now covers a period that spans
one Mars year (687 Earth days), beginning in September 1997 with pictures
taken during the aerobraking phase and extending through August 1999
when Global Surveyor was well into its mapping mission. Many of the
pictures have such high resolution that objects on the surface the
size of a school bus can be seen.

According to the Mars Orbiter Camera imaging team, placing
these images within NASA's Planetary Data System for archiving is
an important step in the Mars Global Surveyor mission that permits
the public to examine the original data and make discoveries "for
themselves." -more- -2-

"Putting these data into perspective is very difficult.
We have focused on 'themes.' Layers on the Martian surface are the
biggest 'theme' or 'finding' of the imaging investigation so far.
To a geologist, layers record history and they are the most geologically
important, profound thing we have seen," said Dr. Michael Malin,
principal investigator for the camera system at Malin Space Science
Systems. "We see layers in the walls of canyons, craters, and
troughs. We see layers in both the north and south polar regions.
We see them in the craters on top of volcanoes, we see them in pits
at the bottoms of impact craters, we see them virtually everywhere
that some process has exposed the subsurface so that we can see it
from above."

"Seeing Mars up close through the narrow angle
camera has been a humbling experience. We often find surfaces for
which there are no obvious analogs on Earth, like certain ridges that
look like dunes. Our terrestrial geologic experience seems, at times,
to fail us," Edgett said. "Perhaps it is because water is
the dominant force of erosion on Earth, even in the driest desert
regions. But on Mars that force of change may have been something
else, like wind. The ridges seen in places like the Valles Marineris
floors are strange. They aren't dunes because they occur too close
together, their crests are too sharp, their slopes too symmetrical.
They often appear to be a specific layer of material that has undergone
erosion -- we just wish we knew what processes are involved that cause
this kind of erosion."

The camera system uses a "push-broom" technique
that systematically builds up pictures of the surface directly below
one line at a time as the spacecraft orbits Mars. The wide-angle lens
provides a complete low-resolution global map of the planet every
day showing surface features and clouds at a resolution of about 4.6
miles (7.5 kilometers). The narrow-angle telescope takes close-up
pictures of small areas with a resolution of about 5 feet (1.5 meters).
Because of the extremely high data volume of the high-resolution images,
controllers cannot use this mode continuously. Instead, they painstakingly
plan which areas they want to target.

Mars Global Surveyor was launched on November 7, 1996
and arrived at Mars on September 12, 1997. The spacecraft has made
more than 5,000 orbits of and has been systematically mapping the
Red Planet since March 1999.

Mars Global Surveyor is managed by the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. The
camera system was built and is operated by Malin Space Science Systems,
San Diego, CA. JPL's industrial partner is Lockheed Martin Astronautics,
Denver, CO, which developed and operates the spacecraft. JPL is a
division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.
- end -

NOTE TO EDITORS: The archive of images can be found at: http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/
A subset of the images can be seen at: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/new
and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs

It's important for readers to appreciate that
nothing happens with regard to Mars absent a political agenda. It is clear from
the surprise nature of this release that it was hastily planned. From the beginning,
Malin has insisted on his contractual right to release or withhold the MGS
images as he saw fit. In the past, as in his Air and Space Smithsonian magazine
interview in September 1999, Malin has insisted that the images should not be
released without taking the time to properly set up web pages, image maps, and
documentation. Using this as his justification, he has insisted that all
reasonable efforts had been made to accommodate his contractual agreements.

So why the sudden reversal? We presume that
it is for the same reasons that he released (again, without prior warning)
the nine new Cydonia images last month -- political
pressure. Obviously, the attempt to diffuse mounting public pressure for
new Cydonia images has not not abated despite his release of the long
withheld images he gave us last month. At the "Real
Mission to Mars" conference in Phoenix over the May 5th weekend,
Enterprise principal investigator Richard C. Hoagland and Citizens
Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) director Peter Gersten called for the pressure
to be maintained on NASA/JPL/MSSS to take and release more images of the
region. Gersten even distributed an online
petition calling for such measures.

But the biggest factor, beyond even these efforts,
has to go to Coast to
Coast AM's new host Mike Siegel. True to his word at the Phoenix conference,
Siegel has kept the pressure on during his nightly show by diligently
giving out the fax numbers and e-mail addresses of a number of public
officials and NASA administrators. Most notably among them, Senator John
McCain.

Obviously, it worked.

But it is important, as we all scan this treasure
trove of new data, not to lose sight of other possible agendas. As we have
pointed out on numerous occasions this year, we feel that this, in some sense,
is the "Year of Disclosure." For reasons we will be making clear in
the coming months, we believe that there is an imperative at NASA to create
justification for a manned Mars exploration program in the next few years. The
easiest way to do this would be to finally admit that there might be something
down there worth investigating.

The problem with that scenario would the
uncomfortable questions that would be asked. Why for instance, did NASA not
acknowledge the reality of Cydonia for 20 years? The best way to avoid this is
to simply release the images en-masse, as they have done here, and let the
public "discover" new anomalies. This creates a plausible deniability
that could effectively insulate NASA from complicity in a cover-up.

Note in this release the tacit admission
that there are unexplainable features on Mars. These features of course
are only "unexplainable" if you exclude the possibility
that some of them might be artificial. Special attention
is given to the "sand dunes" that seem to make up the base of
many structural objects at Cydonia, which we have alleged are not sand
dunes at all. A lot of these features were pointed out by Hoagland at
the Phoenix conference, and we know that a representative of MSSS was
in attendance.

Another factor to consider is the reaction
to our recent revelations about "Tom Corbett
- Space Cadet." No story we have published in recent years has
produced the reaction among the public and media that this story has.
The value of Tom Corbett merchandise on e-bay
has skyrocketed since the publication of our story. As interest in the
"Hollywood Connection" mounts, it may have become important
to knock this story out of the headlines. Rest assured, we will not be
distracted from revealing more interesting connections between Hollywood's
"Magick" and Cydonia in the coming weeks. Meantime, let's all
go feast on the bounty that our hard work and political pressure has produced.

Note: Please do not send images via e-mail. Instead provide
a hyperlink to images of interest.

MB

FLASH! - As we go to press, Britain has announced
that it is sending
a lander, similar to the Viking 1 and 2 landers, to search for life
on Mars in 2003. This seems to an interesting time to announce, given
the other Mars news of the day. If the lander arrives on schedule, it
will be on December 26th, 2003.

Which just happens to the "birthday" of a certain
Egyptian god we have all heard so much about in the last few years.